


G is for Garbage

by coolbyrne



Series: The Alphabet Series [7]
Category: NCIS
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-22
Updated: 2020-09-22
Packaged: 2021-03-07 22:42:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,290
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26595433
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coolbyrne/pseuds/coolbyrne
Summary: You can tell a lot about someone based on their garbage. Jack does a little team profiling. Pre-Slibbs but getting there.
Relationships: Jethro Gibbs/Jacqueline "Jack" Sloane
Series: The Alphabet Series [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1909126
Comments: 17
Kudos: 71





	G is for Garbage

The trio stepped off the elevator, silent and shell-shocked. It wasn't until they got to their desks that Torres broke the quiet with a huge shudder and a long, "Eeeeeeesh!" While his teammates shared his sentiment with shudders and faces of their own, Jack came bounding down the stairs with a water bottle in her hand and a much different attitude.

"Hey! I heard you got called to a house in Shaw." When no one replied, she prodded, "Bit of a mess?"

The question opened the floodgates. "Jack, it was horrible," Nick said.

Bishop held up her hands. "It was gross."

Even the seasoned vet looked stunned. "I have never seen anything like it," Tim admitted.

Jack looked around for a fourth opinion. "Where's Agent Gibbs?"

"He said he was going to see if Jimmy got a head start on the body," Torres said, "but I'm pretty sure he went to take a shower."

Jack smiled. "The Marine discipline practically made him crawl out of his skin, huh?" 

"It made me crawl out of my skin and I don't have half the discipline he does!" Bishop added her own shudder for effect. 

"Tell me you have pictures," Jack asked, hands clasped under her chin.

"Oh, we have pictures," Torres said. "Lots of pictures."

"Mainly because we had no idea where to start or what we were looking for." Tim took the remote and flashed the first grid of photos on the screen. "No matter where we looked, we couldn't decide if it was important or not."

"Wow," Jack whispered.

"Yeah, that's one way to put it," Torres agreed.

"This is incredible."

Bishop heard the wistful admiration in Jack's voice. "Incredibly gross," she said.

Jack smiled. She understood the initial revulsion, but as a psychologist, she found it fascinating. "I get it, I do," she said, "but if you look deeper, there's so much more here."

"We tried to look deeper, but it's at least 8 layers."

She turned to Torres and elbowed him gently. "I'm not kidding. We may not understand it, but there are memories and history here. Every piece of clothing, every book, every knick-knack meant something to the victim, even if it all looks like garbage to us. It may seem like it says nothing, but it tells us a lot, and that applies to everyone from a hoarder to a neat and tidy, borderline obsessive health nut." Her wink was directed at Torres.

"I don't have garbage," he denied.

"Yeah, except for all your hair product containers and vitamin bottles, I bet," Bishop joked.

Narrowing his eyes, he nudged Jack. "What do you think Agent Bishop has in her garbage?"

"Not fair," Ellie objected. "She's a psychologist."

Ignoring the counter, Torres lifted his chin in her direction. "Agent Sloane?"

Jack watched the banter and laughed. "Well, I would say someone might come to the conclusion that Agent Bishop likes chocolate and misses home."

"How do you-" Bishop stopped herself. "My Dr. Pepper." She nodded her approval. "Not bad. Now do Tim."

"Oh, that one's easy- lots of baby things and electronic packages. A father with a slightly more than healthy tech obsession."

Now it was his turn to protest. "It's my job!" But when everyone laughed, he laughed with them.

"Okay," Bishop said, rubbing her hands together and lowering her voice to a whisper, as if the very suggestion she was about to say would conjure up the subject. "Now do Gibbs."

Though she knew he would be the next likely target, Jack floundered ever so slightly, uncertain if she wanted to delve into a topic about the man with his team, even if it was nothing more than a playful mental exercise. She tried to pretend it was out of respect for him, but she knew it had more to do with her burgeoning feelings for him and her fear of letting a glimpse of them seep through. But seeing the friendly expectant faces of the three agents softened her defenses. 

"Well, for starters, I bet he's absolutely militant about separating his recyclables." The laughter from his team had her laughing, too. "I bet his newspapers are stacked neatly with brown string and a square knot. His bottles are in cardboard boxes sorted by size. Anyone seeing that would suspect military."

"Or a serial killer," Torres piped up. "What?" he asked, seeing the eye rolls. "I watch all those documentaries, too. I know the deal."

Continuing her sketch profile, Jack said, "He _definitely_ has some kind of compost container. Where else is he going to put all those coffee grounds? So he probably doesn't have a lot of garbage, per se. Styrofoam and plastic from his steaks. A billion coffee cups. Some takeout containers from the Chinese place two blocks from his house, a pizza box- pepperoni or a meat lovers', none of that fancy crap." She added the last part in a remarkable impression of the man that made Bishop look away, Tim cough and Torres press his lips together to hold back his laugh. Had she not been so enamoured by the idea of being able to share her thoughts on the otherwise enigmatic Special Agent Gibbs, she might have noticed the smell of fresh soap and sawdust, but she was on a roll now. "Bread bags, white only, even if his doctor has been pestering him to switch to whole wheat. Butter packaging, because he's definitely not putting margarine on the popcorn I hear he makes in his fireplace." She brought her hands together under her chin as she contemplated her list. 

"Anything else, Agent Sloane?"

The voice came from over her shoulder and she closed her eyes.

"It's so much more satisfying when it's not me," Torres remarked at Jack's realization of who was behind her.

"Don't worry, Agent Sloane," Tim said, "it happens to all of us. It's like a rite of passage."

"Makes you one of us now," Bishop said. "Welcome to the club."

She thanked them all with a smile, even as she was dying inside. She summoned the courage to turn around. "Gibbs. Good to see you."

His eyes went from her face to her heels and back up again. As mortified as she was, she wasn't going to back down from his gaze, and they held a charged staring contest until he flicked his eyes down to the bottle in her hand. 

"Recycle bin's around the corner."

His reminder made her wonder just how long he'd been standing there, but she wasn't going to give him the satisfaction of asking. Instead, she straightened her shoulders and raised her chin. "Thank you. And on that note, I think I need to take out my office trash before anyone starts going through it." That got her the smile she was aiming for, and it was all it took to sweep away her embarrassment. 

Without breaking eye contact, he said, "Whattya got on the victim, McGee?"

Tim's hesitation was minute, his readiness honed by almost 2 decades with Gibbs. "Margaret Preston," he began, switching the photos on the screen with ones of the woman. "Call came in at 10:25 last night, but it took local law enforcement hours to actually find her, as you can imagine."

Everyone went from personal to professional in the blink of an eye, all attention shifting to the case.

…..

Her return to her office wasn't a direct path from the bullpen; it involved one stop to the ladies' room and one to the aforementioned bin. And it was a long enough detour for someone to sneak into her office and leave a copy of the DPW's Recyclable and Compostables list on her desk.

' _Welcome to DC'_ , he had scribbled on the bottom.

…..

-end.


End file.
